Born: 1 September 1949, United States
Died: 15 November 2014
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following bio was written by Emma Rosen, author of On This Day She Made History: 366 Days With Women Who Shaped the World and This Day In Human Ingenuity & Discovery: 366 Days of Scientific Milestones with Women in the Spotlight, and has been republished with permission.
Leslie Feinberg was an American butch lesbian, transgender activist, author, and communist. Her notable works include “Stone Butch Blues” (1993) and “Transgender Warriors” (1996), which played a significant role in gender studies.
In the 1970s, she joined the Workers World Party, participating in various social and political events. Feinberg wrote for the Workers World newspaper for fifteen years and published her first novel, “Stone Butch Blues,” which received critical acclaim.
Her nonfiction works encompassed transgender issues and history. In 2019, she was honored on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor in New York City. Feinberg described herself as “an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist.”
IW note: Although Feinberg described herself as transgender, she was assigned female at birth and does not appear to have identified as non-binary, gender fluid or male, referring to herself as lesbian, female, etc. Feinberg’s reasoning for calling herself transgender appears to be a conflation of gender presentation and gender identity, based on people mistaking her (as a butch lesbian) for male rather than how she saw herself.